Cesium for Omniverse v0.26.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.21.0

CesiumJS 1.137

Digital Twins

Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of England’s most iconic estates, faces a monumental challenge: maintaining a 300-year-old building that welcomes over one million visitors annually, while also serving as a lived-in residence.

Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of England’s most iconic estates. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

To keep up with these challenges, Blenheim Palace has invested in an IoT sensor network that monitors all sorts of data from the building, such as temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, and footfall.

The data, pouring in from over 30 platforms, became too much for their building management system (BMS) to take in and ended up siloed, often buried in folders. Maintenance teams, facing restoration costs of £4 million a year and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data, found it nearly impossible to get a comprehensive picture of the state of the palace, let alone plan for the future.

At 300 years old, Blenheim Palace requires constant maintenance and reconstruction work. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

That’s all changed now that they’ve developed a digital twin of Blenheim Palace, built with Cesium, that provides a single source of truth for the state of the palace. IoT sensors feed real-time alerts into a unified platform, allowing maintenance teams to visualize issues in context, plan restoration work proactively, and even receive automated notifications when environmental thresholds are breached.

Blenheim digital twin for smart conservation

Blenheim Palace’s digital twin was born with the announcement of the Cesium Design Tiler and Add-In for Autodesk Revit. The team at Blenheim saw that the 3D Tiles open standard would allow them to efficiently stream heavy Revit files into a lightweight environment, providing a frontend through which they could access all of the IoT data they were collecting.

Loaded in CesiumJS, the interactive palace model streams smoothly despite its size and complexity thanks to 3D tiling via the Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In.  Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

In partnership with the Heritage Innovation Laboratory Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, Blenheim’s team worked to make their BIM model the foundation of a digital twin. They sliced their architectural model into over 14,000 individual elements, each tied to metadata: material type, historical repairs, risk assessments, etc. Then, using the Revit add-in and the Design Tiler in Cesium ion, they tiled the model into 3D Tiles. Now with a model that retained all the detail and metadata of the original but tiled for smooth navigation, they loaded the 3D Tileset into CesiumJS.

The original palace model came from a scanned point cloud, corrected by architects and tied to floor plans. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

With the Revit model as the frontend, the palace’s intricate structure became an interactive digital twin. The model of the palace is easy to navigate, accessible to both technical and non-technical staff. Users can filter views of the site, for example, by restoration needs deemed most urgent in a recent risk assessment.

Users can filter views of the site, for example, by restoration needs deemed most urgent in a recent risk assessment. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

Behind the interactive model sits Blenheim’s entire IoT network. By centralizing data with Cesium and automating alerts, Blenheim Palace reduced manual oversight and enabled proactive maintenance, potentially lowering restoration costs by up to 10%.

Blenheim Palace’s digital twin has a growing database currently exceeding 150 million rows of environmental and building data, fed by IoT sensors integrated with BMS controllers. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

Predictive maintenance guided by AI insights

The digital twin also contains archival data tied to the model. This historic view, developed by Clara Saliba, makes the model a portal to the archives, giving users access to decades of maintenance history and to machine learning models trained to identify patterns in stonefall, water ingress, and exfoliation. These machine learning models are expected to enable predictive maintenance and sustainable energy use.

“Heritage isn’t just about preserving the past—it’s about imagining its future. With Cesium ion, we turned our Revit model from a virtual replica into a digital twin of Blenheim Palace—a dynamic simulation that tracks condition and restoration data, identifies inefficiencies, predicts future needs, and transforms how we manage heritage through technology.” 

- David Green, Head of Innovation, Blenheim Palace

The digital twin isn’t just about capturing the current state of the building. The Blenheim team is using this data to reach specific goals: Blenheim Palace aims to be carbon net zero by 2027, and a precise, real-time view into the building allows them to track energy usage and optimize systems via smart controllers to meet this ambitious goal.

"The Digital Twin at Blenheim Palace has been the flagship project for the Heritage Innovations Laboratory Oxford since its inception in 2022. As soon as we began collaborating with Cesium in the winter of last year, we began making rapid progress in pursuing our collective goals of linking heritage science and digital twinning to arrive at predictive solutions for managing built heritage environments." 

- Mr. Sterling MacKinnon III, Heritage Innovations Laboratory Oxford

Future steps for the Blenheim Palace digital twin

Looking ahead, Blenheim team plans to add even more granularity to their digital twin: they’d like to slice it even further to capture more architectural details and to include household items like tapestries and furniture. They expect the model to eventually grow from its current 14,000 elements to over 50,000. In addition, they foresee being able to run frequent drone surveys of the building to provide regular updates on the state of the structure.

Blenheim Palace’s digital twin provides a model other heritage sites could use for smart conservation. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

Blenheim’s team also built their digital twin with an eye to other heritage sites that could benefit from similar analysis. Few heritage sites around the world have the internal technical expertise that Blenheim has cultivated, and the Blenheim team has designed their digital twin to scale. They plan to develop their system into a broadly applicable platform other locations could also use, offering a model for sustainable digital conservation.

In Blenheim Palace’s digital twin, Cesium provides a spatial environment that has become the index to accessing, visualizing, and analyzing a host of data about the building. Here the palace is shown together with Cesium World Terrain and satellite imagery at its real world location. Courtesy Blenheim Palace.

To tile your own Revit models as 3D Tiles, making them streamable over the web or in runtime engines like Unreal Engine and Unity, download the add-in from the Autodesk App Store, the Cesium downloads page, or the GitHub repo.

Blenheim Palace Performing Smart Conservation with Cesium

When a court case following a serious automobile accident could benefit from a visualization of the incident, attorneys turn to Forensic Rock, a Philadelphia company that creates visualizations of accident scenes using tire marks, LiDAR scans, and other physical evidence. With Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and Cesium for Unreal, Forensic Rock delivers immersive, accurate reconstructions with speed and precision.

Forensic Rock recreates accident scenes for court cases using Photorealistic 3D Tiles and Cesium for Unreal. Courtesy Forensic Rock.

Visualizing car accidents using Cesium for Unreal

Forensic Rock

In one urgent case, Forensic Rock animators were given only two weeks to reconstruct an accident. They completed their animation on time thanks to Cesium for Unreal.

Forensic Rock’s typical process is to complete a LiDAR scan of the site, then build the scene and add an animation of the circumstances of the accident. By using Cesium for Unreal, they were able to forgo the labor intensive scanning and modeling stage. Through Cesium ion, animators had instant access to curated global datasets, including Photorealistic 3D Tiles, which gave them the real-world terrain and building data from the exact crash location needed for the scene.

With Photorealistic 3D Tiles, Forensic Rock can focus on visualizations without losing time to scanning and modeling the environment. Courtesy Forensic Rock.

Using Photorealistic 3D Tiles from the exact location of the accident, as well as police report data about the vehicle’s speed and position, they plotted a point-to-point crash trajectory that clearly demonstrated the path of the accident. The result was a compelling, data-driven animation that attorneys could use in court.

“While the forensics business often presents stressful deadlines, the integration of Cesium into our pipeline ensures we are always prepared.” 

Because Cesium is built around open standards, animators have access to high-quality datasets like Photorealistic 3D Tiles to bridge the gap between raw data and visual storytelling—making their work not just technically impressive but also impactful in legal contexts. Sign up for a Cesium ion account to bring real-world datasets into your application.

Forensic Rock Accelerates Accident Reconstruction with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles

Cesiumは、Japan 3Dコンテンツをアップデートしました。このコンテンツには、新たに Japan Regional Terrainが加わりました。このデータセットは、国土地理院 (GSI) が公開している基盤地図情報に基づいています。 Japan Regional Terrainデータセットは、1mから10mの解像度で日本の高解像度地形面を提供します。Japan Regional TerrainとJapan 3D Buildingsデータセットの組み合わせは、デジタルツインアプリケーションとソリューションを構築するための基盤を提供します。 

また、Japan 3D Buildingsもアップデートしました。 Japan 3D Buildingsは、 国全体の単一データセットで、 日本の国土交通省PLATEAUプラットフォームのオープンソースCityGMLデータセットから派生したものです。

アップデートには以下が含まれます： 

利用可能な高解像度地形に合わせて、建物の高さを更新

PLATEAUのCityGMLデータで利用可能な橋梁要素の追加

これらのアップデートは、都市計画、開発提案、複数の建築設計オプションの提示、現実的な日照・日影調査のためのデジタルツインビジュアライゼーションの作成において、Japan 3D Buildingsの全体的な精度と使いやすさの向上に役立ちます。

Japan 3D Buildingsに2,000以上の橋梁要素が加わりました。

このアップデートは、日本の国土交通省のPLATEAU 3D都市モデルデータからコンパイルされ、日本全国にある2,300万以上の3D建物と2,000以上の3D橋梁が含まれています。 この3Dデータは、Cesium ion Asset Depotを通じて、Cesium ion Stories、Cesium JS、またはUnreal、Unity、Nvidia Omniverse用のランタイムで使用できる単一のタイルセットとして提供されます。

CesiumJSで地形と橋を更新したJapan 3D Buildings。

このリリースは、前回のJapan 3D Buildingsに続き、Cesiumの重要なパートナーであり、Cesium Certified DeveloperでもあるPacific Spatial Solutions (PSS)社の協力によって実現しました。PSSは、地理空間に関する深い知識と優れたデジタルツイン技術を持ち、協力的なアプローチが評価されている信頼性の高い団体であり、日本政府からも重要なデータセットの管理を任されています。

「Cesium社がCesium ion のアセットとして配信する国交省PLATEAUの3D都市モデルと、この度リリースされた高解像度のPLATEAU地形データとともに利用すれば、これまで個人や企業では実現困難であった高精度の3Dデータの活用が劇的に簡単になります。だれでも高精度3Dデータが活用できる時代の到来です！」Pacific Spatial Solutions 株式会社　代表取締役 今木 洋大 様

Japan 3D BuildingsとJapan Regional Terrainデータセットは、Cesium ion Asset Depotで直接ご利用いただけます。アクセスするには、Cesium ion にサインインするか、サインアップして、「My Assets 」に追加してストリーミングを開始してください。

最新のデータを、自己環境でストリーミングしたい場合には、セールスチームにお問合せ下さい。Japan 3D Buildings と Japan Regional Terrain データは Cesium ion Self-Hostedでも利用可能です。

Cesium has released updates to our available Japan 3D Content. Our content offerings now include Japan Regional Terrain data. This dataset is based on the Fundamental Geospatial Data published by Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI). The Japan Regional Terrain dataset provides a high resolution terrain surface of Japan with resolutions ranging from 1m to 10m. The combination of Japan Regional Terrain with Japan 3D Buildings provides a foundation for building digital twin applications and solutions. 

We’ve also updated Japan 3D Buildings. Japan 3D Buildings is a single, countrywide dataset derived from Japan’s MLIT Plateau Platform open source CityGML datasets. The update includes: 

Updated building heights that align with available high resolution terrain

Addition of bridge features available in PLATEAU’s CityGML data

These updates will improve the overall accuracy and usability of Japan 3D Buildings in the creation of digital twin visualizations for urban planning, development proposals, presenting multiple building design options, and realistic sun and shadow studies.

Japan 3D Buildings now includes over 2,000 bridge features.

This update is compiled from Japan’s MLIT PLATEAU 3D City model data and contains more than 23 million 3D buildings combined with over 2,000 3D bridge features across Japan. This 3D data is made available in a single tileset available through the Cesium ion Asset Depot that can be used with Cesium Stories, CesiumJS, or our runtimes for Unreal Engine, Unity, and NVIDIA Omniverse.

Japan 3D Buildings with updated terrain and bridges in CesiumJS.

We’d like to recognize our valued partner and Cesium Certified Developer, Pacific Spatial Solutions (PSS), whose expertise in geospatial and digital twin technology has been instrumental in this release. They previously supported us in releasing Japan 3D Buildings. PSS’s deep knowledge and collaborative approach have made them a reliable partner, earning the trust of the Japanese government in managing critical datasets.

“Together with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's PLATEAU 3D city model distributed by Cesium as a Cesium ion asset and the recently released high-resolution PLATEAU terrain data, the use of high-precision 3D data, which has been difficult for individuals and companies to achieve, will become dramatically easier. The era in which anyone can utilize high-precision 3D data has arrived!” - Hiroo Imaki, President, Pacific Spatial Solutions

The Japan 3D Building and Japan Regional Terrain dataset are available directly in the Cesium ion Asset Depot. To access, sign into Cesium ion, or sign up, and add them to “My Assets” to start streaming. 

Contact our sales team to learn how you can stream this data from your own environment. Japan 3D Buildings and Japan Regional Terrain data can also be licensed with Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Japan 3D コンテンツのアップデート

In April 2024, AERO AI, a Cesium Certified Developer, was awarded a Cesium Ecosystem Grant to reintegrate Cesium ion and WebODM, a free and open source drone imagery processing platform from OpenDroneMap.

The OpenDroneMap community can now tile aerial data as 3D Tiles directly from the WebODM dashboard.

AERO AI’s Cesium Ecosystem Grant supports the WebODM Reintegration Project, focusing on the WebODM Cesium plugin. The plugin enables users from AEC, environmental conservation, geospatial analysis, and beyond to benefit from the ability to integrate, process, analyze, and visualize aerial data and 3D geospatial information.

Workflow for a user to process drone imagery in OpenDroneMap’s WebODM and upload to Cesium ion. Courtesy AERO AI.

Developed by OpenDroneMap, WebODM is open source software for drone image processing that is widely used by drone pilots, organizations, and academic institutions. It allows users to generate maps, point clouds, DEMs, and 3D models from aerial imagery. With the Cesium ion plugin, users can effortlessly upload this data to Cesium ion, where it is transformed into 3D Tiles for diverse applications. These include creating scalable, high-resolution immersive experiences and digital twins of buildings and urban environments. Users can also produce maps for disaster recovery, urban planning, wildlife management, and environmental monitoring, providing critical insights into terrain changes over time and improving decision-making for projects that require precise spatial analysis.

With the Cesium ion plugin, WebODM users can effortlessly upload their data to Cesium ion, where it is transformed into 3D Tiles for diverse applications. Courtesy AERO AI.

Cesium ion-WebODM Plugin

AERO AI rebuilt the Cesium plugin from the ground up, enabling the seamless integration of georeferenced ortho maps, point clouds, and 3D models generated in WebODM with Cesium ion. We removed the deprecated react-bootstrap dependency and implemented several API updates to improve overall functionality. We also resolved issues with dropdown buttons, refined styling with a cursor change, and refactored the modal usage. Our team fixed the file upload functionality in the UploadDialog and addressed text input issues. Plus we made adjustments to the task dialog, added logic to generate zip files for textured models, and updated the manifest plugin version while removing outdated dependencies. The full list of updates is here. Reach out to AERO AI with questions.

Options to upload and tile orthophotos, point clouds, surface models, and terrain models generated in WebODM to Cesium ion using the Cesium ion plugin for WebODM.

AERO AI developed the Simulated Environment for Geospatial Assets (SiEGA) platform, which integrates a variety of 3D technologies within an advanced physics engine. SiEGA supports streaming 3D Tiles and allows for the seamless import of WebODM assets, tiled through Cesium ion for high-resolution geospatial visualization. It is among the 3D creation engines that support streaming 3D Tiles.

WebODM-generated 3D model tiled as 3D Tiles by Cesium ion and streamed to AERO AI’s platform, SiEGA. Courtesy AERO AI.

The WebODM-Cesium ion integration is straightforward. Follow the new tutorial to try it out.

Create 3D Tiles from OpenDroneMap in WebODM

At Cesium, we believe that collaboration is the key to advancing the 3D geospatial ecosystem for the benefit of all. For over a decade, we have supported interoperability with leading GIS providers like Esri to meet the growing need for comprehensive solutions that represent the natural and built environment with reality capture models, BIM/CAD designs, and traditional GIS layers. 

3D Tiles support for Esri products, and collaboration with Esri and standards organizations like the Open Geospatial Consortium ("OGC"), enables users to find the best solutions for their geospatial use cases.

Collaboration enabled with OGC standards like 3D Tiles and I3S to support streaming, analyzing and creating 3D geospatial content and applications.

Esri ArcGIS helps users solve complex GIS problems to show hidden patterns, trends, and relationships. Combining this with efficient streaming and 3D visualization capabilities enables users to build solutions delivering advanced spatial data management and analysis.


The combination of GIS and 3D streaming capabilities can address a number of cases in the rapidly growing area of digital twins. For example, a design firm that is creating a spatially accurate 3D representation of a proposed project that includes utility, traffic, and zoning information can share multiple versions of their detailed architectural models to collect public feedback. Or a community group building a virtual experience of their city can combine 3D buildings with route planning to key landmarks or locations.  Facilitated by open standards like 3D Tiles and Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), Esri and Cesium are helping users unlock geospatial insights, increase access to spatial data, and empower a large and diverse community of users.

Cesium Esri examples

Last fall, Esri announced the integration of 3D Tiles into the ArcGIS System of Record as a way of enhancing 3D GIS workflows. This integration allows users to combine 3D Tiles with other OGC community standard GIS layers, such as Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), for use in exploration tools, analysis, animation, layouts, and more. With 3D Tiles seamlessly integrated, users can elevate their data beyond a realistic visualization by leveraging the analytic power of a complete GIS. 

ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro and Drone2Map

ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro and Drone2Map can be used to process aerial and drone imagery to create full resolution Digital Surface Models (DSMs), true orthos, and 3D point clouds, as well as 2D meshes and photo-realistic 3D meshes that can be exported as 3D Tiles.

With ArcGIS Pro, users can visualize 3D Tiles layers together with other 2D or 3D layers, view layers with different spatial references together, drape 2D layers on top of 3D mesh layers, and edit features based on 3D Tiles layers. With 3D Tiles layers, users can now interactively analyze scenes and perform exploratory analysis like viewsheds and view domes. ArcGIS Pro also allows users to share 3D Tiles layers from a scene to ArcGIS Online.

Users can integrate 3D Tiles integrated mesh layers into Scene Viewer. Like the existing Integrated mesh scene layer, a 3D Tiles integrated mesh layer can represent built and natural environments through realistic textures and elevation information and be used in combination with other geospatial content.

Along with other OGC Services, users can add 3D Tiles as a local tileset or via a hosted service in ArcGIS Online or third party web servers to ArcGIS Earth, Esri’s free application for visualizing and exploring geospatial content in 3D.

Both the 200.4 release of the ArcGIS Maps SDKs for Native Apps and the 4.29 release of the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript adds support for 3D Tiles.  These features allow developers to leverage the power of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 3D Tiles format, providing a seamless integration of yet another type of 3D geospatial data into their custom applications.

ArcGIS Scene Viewer with 3D Tiles with draped graphics for relative energy ratings and labels for construction years for buildings in the city Utrecht - from Esri Developer IntegratedMesh3DTilesLayer sample application - https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/sample-code/layers-integratedmesh3dtileslayer/live/

Open and connected APIs and data services from other providers help to unlock the value of the 3D geospatial ecosystem. Cesium has long-supported the integration of ArcGIS Terrain, Imagery, and Map services within CesiumJS.  

Recently, Esri collaborated with Cesium to enable Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) within CesiumJS. This open source contribution from Esri brings extensive collections of I3S content from ArcGIS to CesiumJS developers and users. I3S, an OGC standard, facilitates the efficient transmission of various 3D data types, including discrete 3D objects with attributes, integrated surface meshes, and point cloud data across vast areas, as well as detailed Building Information Model (BIM) content. This capability supports delivery to web browsers, mobile apps, and desktop environments. Currently, the I3S integration into CesiumJS supports 3D Objects, Integrated Mesh, and Building Scene Layer data types, enabling the integration of 3D and 2D data from multiple sources, including Cesium ion and ArcGIS Online, into a single geospatial application.

ArcGIS Terrain and Basemaps in Cesium ion as shown in Esri Developer Tutorials

ArcGIS I3S Services, ArcGIS Basemap and Cesium World Terrain as shown in Esri Developer Tutorials

Another layer of integration between the ArcGIS and Cesium platforms is at the developer level where we have collaborated to bring ArcGIS Location Services and the ArcGIS Maps SDKs into CesiumJS.  ArcGIS Location Services provide services for building mapping and spatial analysis applications, available as part of ArcGIS. The inclusion of the various ArcGIS APIs is another step in the multi-year effort to steadily add open source support for ArcGIS APIs, data, and services to CesiumJS.  

Additionally, Esri’s Developer site provides over 20 tutorials showing users how to integrate ArcGIS locations services and CesiumsJS. Through this collaboration, CesiumJS users can combine ArcGIS location services and Google Map Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles to quickly and easily create powerful 3D geospatial visualizations. 

Esri Location Services with Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform streamed into CesiumJS

See the reference materials for more info. As we begin the next chapter at Cesium, open standards remain at our core. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with industry leaders like Esri to offer additional value and capabilities to the 3D geospatial community. 

If you have ideas about integrations between Cesium and Esri or other third party organizations, please share them on the Cesium Community Forum.

Updated 10/04/2024 to include ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript

Globe view of UNICiv, showing sites from 1800 BCE - 1500 CE. The Legananny Dolmen in Ireland is selected.

Interactive digital maps display detailed contemporary geographic information, increasingly in 3D, for navigation, exploration, and virtual travel. What the world looked like near the beginnings of human civilization, however, is more difficult to discover, search, and visualize. Cesium Research’s most recent publication, UNICiv: A Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization, explores Cesium’s ability to support 3D models of ancient and historic sites within their geographical and temporal context.

Developed over the summer by Cesium's Yuhan Liu and led by Dr. Norman Badler, Head of Research, UNICiv is an extensible, universal, spatio-temporal interface that leverages Cesium for Unreal and 3D Tiles to visualize structures of the distant past. As a demonstration and education tool, UNICiv’s applications range from cultural heritage to urban planning. The UNICiv publication has been accepted as a full research paper to the Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (GCH 2024). 

GCH is the premier technical meeting for novel digital technologies in the cultural heritage domain, fostering discussions in AI, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Human-Computer Interaction.

UNICiv offers over 30 explorable 3D models of historic and archaeological sites around the world, displayed collectively on a single interactive globe. These models are produced by archaeologists, independent artists, or research projects from institutions and nonprofits. Sites range in time from 8000 BCE to 1500 CE. Examples include Neolithic monuments like Stonehenge, ruins of Bronze Age villages, and Greco-Roman temples. These models have been curated and imported into Cesium for Unreal through Cesium’s integration with Sketchfab. The models are imported into Unreal using Cesium’s plugin and placed on top of Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial imagery.

Users can explore the past in 3D using UNICiv’s interface. Start by navigating a Cesium globe where ancient structures are highlighted as pins. The timeline interface indexes sites that appear on the globe. When users select a site, they are taken on a flight path to its geolocated model, where they can use traditional game controls to explore. Users can build their personalized list of sites to save, compare, and present their findings. Additionally, some locations offer reconstructed visualizations that can be overlaid on current-day ruins, providing a unique perspective on how these ancient sites once appeared.

Perspective view of the reconstructed Old Temple at Pachacamac in Peru. Site list controls set to Common Era (0-1500 CE). Cesium World Terrain shows the present-day view of the Lima Province. Model courtesy of Aline Normoyle, Clark Erickson, and Norman Badler, used with permission.

La Motilla del Azuer, 3D Model from Global Digital Heritage on SketchFab. Tour site list shows manually added fortification sites.

Amphitheatre of Butrint, 3D Model by Ørjan Sandland, imported from Sketchfab (CC Attribution). Simultaneous Site List shows all sites with reconstructions (not pictured) available to view. The Albanian mountains are part of Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial Imagery.

Temple of Apollo - Naxos Greece, 3D Model by Vasilis Haroupas on SketchFab. Simultaneous Site List shows all available BCE models. Terrain from Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial Imagery.

From incorporating more models to iterating on user experience, UNICiv is an ongoing research project with exciting directions for future work. A significant task for the future would be to incorporate and reverse-engineer significant geographical changes to experience the natural environment experienced by the earth’s earliest inhabitants. In the meantime, UNICiv provides a uniform, 3D geospatial, contextualized interface to the re-discovered past.

The UNICiv publication was one of eight full research papers accepted to the 22nd Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage 2024. The Cesium research team is excited to present at the conference, which takes place September 16–18, 2024, in Darmstadt, Germany.

UNICiv is a powerful tool for visualizing temporal change on a global scale, especially in cultural and historical preservation. Initial user evaluations have highlighted UNICiv’s significant potential for advancing archaeological demonstration, education, and exploration. Furthermore, the UNICiv interface becomes increasingly adept at capturing the development of human civilization as more 3D models are integrated into it. Thus, the Cesium research team plans to soon provide open access to the UNICiv resource and welcomes collaborations and user contributions. Contact Dr. Norm Badler to express your interest in UNICiv.  

For help getting started on your own project with Cesium for Unreal, visit the Learning Center. 

Cesium Research's Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization (UNICiv) Accepted for Publication and Presentation at Eurographics Conference

LUUCY is offering tools built on CesiumJS for urban development and city planning with a focus on Switzerland. Development in urban areas can be complex, with many stakeholders of diverse backgrounds. 

With Cesium, LUUCY provides greater transparency from planning to realization so all stakeholders, whether investors, business owners, construction teams, or government officials, can collaborate on future development projects.

Sketches created in the app allow stakeholders to quickly explore a proposed development from all angles. These are intended for early in the development process, and not as a replacement to a CAD program.

LUUCY is meant to be used at a preliminary stage of planning as several variants of a feasibility study can be easily sketched within a few minutes. These visualizations are meant to inspire the imagination, support communication, and aid in the decision-making process.

Proposing alternate designs for a development area in the optional sketch shading mode. Users can model different buildings with many variations and compare them on the fly both visually and statistically.

Users can also create presentations to share with other stakeholders. LUUCY automatically flies to the individual locations of the slides and switches the desired layers on or off, not requiring the user to know how to navigate a 3D environment. 

LUUCY is designed for interactive views from any device and for large multi-screen presentations to invite comment on planned development. 

The core of the app is a 3D model of the real world with representative buildings, topography, and vegetation. 

The flexibility of the Cesium framework allows for a wide variety of different and highly detailed data to be visualized at the same time, with good performance. 

Beginning with that canvas, users create their own building sketches with simplified modeling tools and can connect to external data services, including Cesium ion assets, web map services, or self-hosted content. Upload functionality offers integration of detailed BIM models, GIS datasets, or site plans. If a dataset is not georeferenced, the user can place it with the built-in Georeferencer App, powered by MapTiler.

Providers can integrate many different data types thanks to Cesium's versatility, including detailed underground structures.

Existing buildings, trees, or other objects can be hidden so users can construct their own buildings or volumes on already developed plots. Custom-built shaders like high-quality screen space ambient occlusion and custom edge shaders also enhance the display possibilities and quality.

With the open source API, LUUCY can be extended with integrations such as construction cost estimates in early design stages.

In the LUUCY marketplace, apps, maps, and 3D data are ready to be integrated into users’ workspaces with just a few clicks.

By making it easier to visually communicate proposed designs, LUUCY makes it easier to explore all aspects of proposed development, including mobility, ecology, energy efficiency, and public spaces. 

Public presentation of visualization of zoning parameters. 

By giving users tools to quickly view, sketch, and share 3D datasets, LUUCY is using Cesium to improve workflows and decision making. To get started building your own CesiumJS app, sign up for a free Cesium ion account. 

LUUCY Providing Better Urban Planning and Site Development with CesiumJS

CAE is one of the world’s most prominent modeling & simulation companies. Their latest initiative, created by the Synthetic Environments and Immersive Technologies team, is a new capability for creating complex, city-scale simulations. The project integrates data about energy infrastructure, lines of communication, the population, emergency services, and cyber and networks, as well as the physical environment. And that smart city is made accessible through the Cesium platform. 

Building a city-scale digital twin requires enormous datasets. In the case of the London demonstration, CAE turned to Bluesky International, the UK’s leading aerial survey company and their MetroVista product London city model, which comprises more than 1 TB of detailed photogrammetry. The best way to access such a large dataset is with 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard developed by the Cesium team. While most users are able to tile their datasets in the cloud using the 3D Tiling pipelines available on Cesium ion, CAE’s dataset was so large that they built a custom on-prem, cloud hosted solution. To tile the dataset, CAE put together a 3D content processing pipeline, built on Microsoft Azure, that included Cesium’s on-premises 3D tiling pipeline to tile the photogrammetry data as 3D Tiles.

With the dataset ready for streaming, CAE used Cesium ion on-prem to stream the 3D Tiles into a CesiumJS viewer.

London at 5 cm resolution with photogrammetry data from Bluesky. This interactive model is shown in CesiumJS and can be accessed through a browser on any device. Smart cities like this stream smoothly thanks to the 3D Tiles open standard. 

London at 5 cm resolution with photogrammetry data from BlueSky. This interactive model is shown in CesiumJS and can be accessed through a browser on any device. The massive model streams smoothly thanks to the 3D Tiles open standard.

CAE digital twin

The resulting model shows the buildings of London in high photorealistic detail. When connected to live data feeds, such as traffic, utility, and emergency services updates, the model can provide real-time insights into the activity taking place in the city. 

CAE’s capability goes beyond providing an up-to-date digital view of a city. The real strength of their model is in the simulations they’ve integrated. In their London demonstration, that includes the simulation of 100,000 pedestrians, the electrical power network, and other data feeds from the region.

These integrations allow the simulation of, for example, a power failure stemming from a cyber attack, showing which regions of the city and which aspects of critical infrastructure would be affected. 

Simulating a power outage in London. The simulation is visualized in CesiumJS. 

CAE utilities simulation

Modeling the entire city, CAE was also able to create pattern of life simulations using 100,000 simulated pedestrians traveling throughout the city. They could then simulate crowds of variable sizes gathering for demonstrations at various locations to review potential impacts. 

Here each green dot represents a pedestrian. The simulation is visualized in CesiumJS. 

Each green dot represents a pedestrian. The simulation is visualized in CesiumJS.

CAE pedestrian simulation

First person simulations in Cesium for Unreal

Having created a complete digital twin of London, CAE didn’t limit their users to a single interface. Besides streaming into CesiumJS for visualization, CAE also serves the same 3D Tiles datasets from Cesium ion into Cesium for Unreal. 

Pedestrian simulations in Cesium for Unreal.

Pedestrian simulations in Cesium for Unreal

CAE Cesium for Unreal

In Unreal Engine, CAE further enhanced some of the photogrammetry dataset with custom 3D models to improve the first person view. For example, the Trafalgar Square area has custom models for Nelson’s column, traffic bollards, and subway entrances.

The Cesium for Unreal experience, available as a desktop application, provides a first-person perspective into the same data and simulation capabilities. Users can see the crowd simulation at street level, including vehicles simulated in Unreal Engine. With a more photorealistic experience and street-level view, these types of simulations are especially useful for training scenarios. The Cesium for Unreal application opens up a range of interactive experiences, including AR and VR.

Simulations for the metaverse built on Cesium

By giving developers the tools to work with huge 3D geospatial datasets, Cesium supports the modsim community with tools for multi-domain operations (MDO), joint all domain command and control (JADC2), humanitarian aid and disaster response (HADR) and urban operations. Supporting that level of integration is just one way we’re committed to building the metaverse. 

CAE was able to simulate a complex dense urban environment by taking advantage of the complete Cesium platform:

Urban simulations visualized in CesiumJS 

Hosting, tiling, streaming, and analyzing 3D geospatial data with Cesium ion

First person visualizations in Cesium for Unreal 

To visualize your complex city system interactions and simulations, contact CAE. To begin building with the Cesium platform, sign up for a Cesium ion account. 

CAE Simulates Complex Dense Urban Environments with Cesium

Australia is leading the world in investing in large scale digital twins. They got started early: in 2014 the Terria team built a National Map using TerriaJS with Cesium to visualize geospatial data from all levels of government. In the years since, Terria has developed digital twins for three of Australia’s six states: Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland. That’s 78% of the total population of the country supported by a digital twin built on Cesium. 

New South Wales Digital Twin

“Creating these digital twins has brought about a digital transformation for state agencies as they have been able to share, manipulate, and manage their data. The visualization component is critical because it brings the data to life. Our stakeholders recognise Cesium as a fundamental enabling technology for an open digital twin ecosystem." 

These digital twins are virtual representations of the real world that serve the government, private companies, and the public with data on the natural and built environment. Not only do these digital twins contain vast amounts of geospatial data, but they are updated in real time with live information from an array of sensors, and they use AI, simulation, and machine learning to support decision making. 

That’s a lot of data to track. Terria has helped state governments set up the infrastructure to manage—and visualize—that data so it becomes much more usable. 

With a digital globe built on Cesium, users can zero in on the data that’s relevant to a particular area. And with the streaming efficiency of 3D Tiles through Cesium ion, they can stream whatever they need, right in the browser.

Users can layer numerous datasets for visualization and analysis, like this photogrammetry layer from Aerometrex. 

One of the greatest strengths of these state digital twins is bringing so many disparate—and previously inaccessible—datasets together into a single platform. Whereas traditionally parcel information, flood simulations, building proposals, and traffic monitoring may have all been siloed in different agencies, the digital twin brings it all together, allowing people to make faster, more informed decisions while reviewing the impact on multiple dimensions. 

Bringing all these datasets into the same place, even sensitive datasets secured by access control, creates a collaborative digital workspace where all organizations work from the same authoritative datasets. This collaboration is essential to building resilient communities. For example, as telecommunications companies share their datasets with emergency agencies, the two are able to cooperatively analyze past wildfires, predict future hazards, and protect critical infrastructure. 

These digital twins cover entire states, including urban and rural areas, offering the ability to coordinate on many levels.

Terria’s digital twins are living models, updated in real time with data from across the state to reflect current conditions.  The digital twins provide real-time updates on wind farm production levels, pest activity, air quality, and live transport data. Because Cesium runs in the browser, users can access updates instantly. 

Like the models, the digital twins themselves will continue to grow with ongoing investments from the government and the many stakeholders with data to share, evolving over time to meet future needs. 

A workbench allows users to select relevant datasets to view, whether government land use data, 3D photogrammetry models, infrastructure details, or live updates like this air quality index dataset. 

A digital twin not only allows users to see current conditions, but enables them to run simulations to make more data-driven decisions in transport, infrastructure, and land management. 

For example, with Cesium 3D terrain it’s possible to review historic flood data and evaluate the potential impact of flooding events. Builders can model project scenarios to demonstrate the feasibility of proposals. Engineers can predict traffic congestion. City planners can analyze infrastructure plans to improve services. Simulations allow users to see the impact of changes on their communities and the environment. 

Digital Twin Victoria

We’re proud to have supported Terria’s transformative work in creating virtual replicas of communities that will support the future of smart cities. 

With the Cesium platform you can bring your own data to a full-scale globe complete with global terrain, imagery, and buildings. Our 3D tiling pipelines will prepare your data for streaming, no matter how large the datasets. Sign up for a free community account to try it out. 

Cesium Supporting State-Sized Digital Twins

iTwin Service, the Bentley Systems platform for building infrastructure digital twins, now supports loading 3D Tiles from Cesium ion.

The Golden Gate Bridge, tiled into 3D Tiles by Cesium ion and visualized in iModel.js, the open source visualization component of iTwin.

This makes iTwin the latest platform to integrate with ion, joining the growing number of places users can combine their own 3D datasets with ion’s curated global layers, including Cesium OSM Buildings and Cesium World Terrain.

Cesium World Terrain has already been the default base layer that engineers rely on when creating digital twins with Bentley’s Context Capture. This latest integration makes it possible to stream massive 3D tilesets from ion into iTwins so engineers can work in their preferred tools, supported by ion’s high resolution geospatial context and 3D tilers.

To learn more about how this new integration works, join this week’s iTwins Developer Conference, hosted by Bentley. Omar Shehata of the Cesium team will be presenting Thursday, November 5, 12:30-1 pm ET on using Cesium ion and iModel.js. Registration is free.

You can also learn how to build your own digital twin by following our tutorial to create an interactive building proposal with Cesium.

Create Digital Twins with Cesium ion and Bentley's iModel.js

The City of Munakata, Japan, is making it easier for citizens to access building data with their i-Urban Renovation application built on Cesium.

Local governments throughout Japan collect data about buildings, including their usage, the number of floors, construction materials, and the construction year. Munakata City, in the northern part of Fukuoka Prefecture, tasked their Urban Structure Visualization Promotion Organization with making this data accessible to the public in a way that was easy to understand.

The distribution of buildings in the area. The number of buildings is aggregated into a regional mesh (1 km grid), and the 3D grid graph is created using the value of the mesh code displayed in Cesium. Because the grid is linked to the information in the place and the number of buildings, it allows for an easy-to-understand presentation when explaining the local situation to residents.

The i-Urban Renovation app they built uses CesiumJS to visualize and share this data. Even though Munakata City covers approximately 120 square kilometers filled with numerous buildings, the application efficiently streams building data using 3D Tiles.